


Silk

by greetingsanddefiance



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: (not graphic though), F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Morning Sickness, Nita Knows Stuff, Parenthood, Pregnancy, Visionary Talent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 12:32:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12481648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greetingsanddefiance/pseuds/greetingsanddefiance
Summary: Kit takes care of Nita when she needs him, and not a moment sooner. This is shameless fluff.





	Silk

**Author's Note:**

> *waves* Hi cousins! I'm here. And so is this fic.

The frigid October wind followed the slight, brown-haired woman into the apartment, even as she slammed the door on it and hurried towards the living room in search of warmth. 

The door to the bedroom Nita Callahan-Rodriguez shared with her husband was closed and the overhead light was already out. This didn’t surprise her, given that it was nearly midnight and Kit had to leave for work at six-thirty am the next morning. What would have surprised her, though, was if he was actually asleep: they were both voracious readers and often sacrificed rest in the name of “just one more chapter.” 

Nita backtracked towards the doorway long enough to hang up her coat and toss her boots into the general vicinity of the shoe rack, and then headed straight for the bedroom. 

She was right about her husband’s state of wakefulness: the bedside lamp was on and Kit had a book open in his lap. As she opened the door, he looked up, a goofy sort of involuntary grin spreading across his face at the sight of his wife.

“Hey, Neets,” he greeted her. 

“Hey yourself,” she responded listlessly, her exhaustion apparent in her voice. She flopped down onto the edge of the bed. “It’s  _ freezing _ out there.” 

Before Kit could respond, she shot back to her feet and bolted for the bathroom. Kit heard the toilet lid and seat slam into each other as they were yanked up, the sound of which was immediately followed by retching. He stood up quickly and followed her. 

Nita was kneeling, bent over the toilet, and in the process of losing anything that remained in her stomach from the last time she‘d eaten. Kit knelt besides her and gathered her hair away from her face, holding it behind her with one hand and using the other to gently rub her back.

When the retching subsided, Nita momentarily sagged against the toilet, resting her cheek on the rim. Kit stopped rubbing her back and put his arm around her shoulders. After a few moments, she lifted her head to look up at him. 

“Eight weeks today,” she said quietly. “And this is only the third time I’ve upchucked since waking up.” 

Kit met her eyes. The exhaustion was written all over her face, as was a kind of resignation. A swell of emotion caught him unawares: the decision to remain open to the idea of having a baby had been one they’d both agreed on, but they both knew that Nita was going to pay the price in far more ways that Kit would -- something that had only become more and more apparent since Nita’s morning sickness had reared its head almost as soon as she’d found out about her pregnancy. The near-constant nausea and frequent vomiting had taken its toll on her, and Kit worried more and more every time she couldn’t keep a meal down.

“I can’t even begin to imagine,” he responded in the same quiet tone. 

Nita chuckled softly. “It’ll get better,” she said, a hint of a smile finding its way back onto her face. “Mom told me that she couldn’t keep anything down until the second trimester when she was pregnant with both me and Dairine, but that it was smooth sailing after that.” 

She leaned her head onto Kit’s shoulder, letting him draw her closer, melting into the security of his embrace. They stayed like that for a few moments, Nita drawing comfort from the way he held her and the sensation of his left hand gently stroking the back of her head, Kit from feeling the stress begin to drain from her body. Then Nita let out a long, shuddering breath and stood up to rinse out her mouth. 

Kit closed the toilet lid and flushed it, then went to stand by Nita as she brushed her teeth. He didn’t need to hear her thoughts to know how drained she was, but they confirmed what her expression and body language had told him: there was a sluggish, muted edge to everything on the other end of the bridge between their minds. Being pregnant during the first finals week of her grad school career was taking its toll. 

Nita spat out the last of the toothpaste foam and rinsed her mouth one final time. She inhaled shakily and turned around, burying her face in Kit’s shoulder once again and loosely wrapping her arms around his waist as his encircled her and drew her closer. 

They stayed like that for a few more minutes. Kit made a conscious effort to keep his breathing deep and steady and his mind calm, knowing his wife would pick up on any anxiety on his side and being completely unwilling to be the source of any more worry for her. 

Finally, Nita let go. “I need a long, warm shower,” she mumbled. “And then I need to sleep.” 

Kit kissed her softly on the forehead. “You go do that,” he said. “I’ll be here.” 

He turned to leave as she went over to switch the shower on. Pausing briefly at the doorway, Kit allowed a tiny smile to play over his lips as he looked at his wife. Her lifelong commitment to putting aside fear for courage and death for life was a constant source of reassurance and strength for him, and this had become more and more apparent in the past few weeks. 

She had directly faced down the creator of all pain and death in the universe more times in the space of her teenage years than most of their colleagues did in their lifetimes -- enough to become as blasé about encountering and fighting the Lone Power as a wizard ever safely could. Yet the changes to her body were something less easy to define or resist. As terrifying and uncomfortable as they may be, they were part and parcel of the process of creating a new life, and Kit knew that she was doing her best to meet every new challenge with calm acceptance. Even when it was as  _ gross _ as the nearly-constant morning sickness. 

Walking slowly back to the bedroom, Kit’s smile grew until it threatened to split his face in two. His wife -- his  _ partner  _ \-- was the bravest and strongest and wisest person he had ever met. Nearly a decade and a half spent in each others’ company, and he still found new reasons to adore her each day.  _ Powers _ that  _ Be _ , he was _ so lucky _ . 

  
  


Nita leaned her forehead against the side of the shower and let the hot water pound down on her back. Her body’s ability to regulate temperature had been increasingly out of whack for the previous few weeks, an annoyance she had no other explanation for than the half-inch-long being in residence in her uterus. She found herself overly warm most of the time, but the cold that had met her earlier that evening as she’d hurried out after clocking out of a late shift at work had fallen all over her like a wall of icy bricks. Missing and then waiting nearly thirty minutes for the bus that would take her home had very distinctly  _ not _ improved matters, either. 

Her muscles hurt, too. Her lower abdomen was already aching, especially around the inside of her hips, despite not even a  _ hint _ of beginning to show, and her perpetually tense shoulders had taken considerable offense to the rapidly shifting temperatures around her for the past several hours.

She was reaching for her body wash when she noticed that the towel rack was empty. Letting out a deep sigh of annoyance, Nita mentally ran through the likely list of places for the towels to be, and remembered that all of Kit’s were in the dirty linen hamper, as were all but one of hers. 

_ Kit? _

_ Yeah?  _ he responded, his mental voice relaxed and calm but not yet overly drowsy. 

_ My towel is in the bedroom. I think it’s hanging up on one of the hooks on my side of the closet. Could you bring it to me, please? _

A few moments later, he opened the bathroom door, towel in hand. He stopped to hang it on the rack, and then looked at Nita with mild concern. 

“Can I join you?” he asked. She nodded and leaned her head back against the shower wall. 

Kit quickly undressed and joined Nita in the shower, being careful not to let too much of the warm, steamy air escape. She hadn’t moved from where she was, her forehead still resting against the wall, and the sag of her shoulders spoke volumes about the toll both her day and the past weeks had taken on her. 

He reached for the shampoo and started washing her hair. Under any other circumstances, Nita would have swatted him playfully and teased him about babying her, but now she just sighed and let him do it, a slight note of contentment audible in her thoughts. He steadied her as she put her head under the water to rinse it out, and then they repeated the same process with the conditioner. 

When he was done, Nita sank down to sit with her back against the side of the shower, letting the comfortingly warm water flow over her bent knees. After adjusting the showerhead slightly to optimise the amount of the spray hitting her, Kit sat down beside her, and she leaned into him. 

They stayed like that for a while. Kit could feel the tightness continuing to drain from his partner’s muscles as the water washed away the stress of her day, and he eventually realised that the warmth of the water and his presence had lulled her to sleep. 

After a moment’s consideration, he reached up and shut off the water. Then, taking incredible pains not to slip, he lifted Nita up, carried her out of the shower, and gently dried them both off with her towel (warming and drying it a few times with a whispered phrase in the Speech). This somehow didn’t wake her, and, being careful to keep it that way, Kit carried his wife back to the bedroom and tucked her into a soft, loose nightgown, put on a pair of boxers, and pulled the blankets over both of them. 

He had almost fallen asleep when Nita stirred, opening her eyes halfway and looking at him. 

“Love you,” she whispered, snuggling closer to him. 

“I love you too,” Kit responded with a soft tenderness.  _ Both of you,  _ he added, mind-to-mind. 

Nita smiled, a sleepy but utterly content look.  _ I can’t wait for you to meet her. _

She had closed her eyes and fallen back asleep before Kit fully processed what she’d said.

_ Her.  _

Whether or not Nita had consciously known what she was saying, he knew she was right. His right hand, already close to her stomach, reached out to touch it, and he smiled, a mirror of the soft look of contentment that had crossed her face minutes earlier. 

_ I love you, daughter. And I love your mother for having the courage to bring you into being.  _

Moments later, the slow, even rhythm of his breath matched that of his wife’s as he followed her peacefully into sleep. 


End file.
